The Texture of Joy

The last few weeks I’ve been thinking about texture; especially the texture of joy. Perhaps I could have chosen a more vivid image, but I am writing about joy from the inside of fatigue. I was feeling fatigue as a weight and then I imagined what it would be like to just go inside it; not give into it, but enter it. This is what joy looks like there; not edgy, but blue, and gold with tiny cloud birds flying softly through it.

All through Lent and Holy Week we were picking up those materials out of which the texture of joy is created. We gathered sorrow and doubt and love and abandonment and carried them all gathered in the rush basket of hope we held balanced on our hip. We recognized in them the fabric of our lives.

We came in odd procession through the holy days, some of us wore suits and others sneakers. Some were very organized, their textures neatly folded and others stuffed them in the way you might when company is coming suddenly and then on Easter morning we spilled them out, a riotous mix of all we’d ever felt.

And through that day, stirred with the sound of our name spoken, joy was made of all we ever held.